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 A tentative blog to test the temperature. |
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Ten years ago I was writing several blogs on various subjects - F1 motor racing, Music, Classic Cars, Great Romances and, most crushingly, a personal journal that included my thoughts on America, memories of England and Africa, opinion, humour, writing and anything else that occurred. It all became too much (I was attempting to update the journal every day) and I collapsed, exhausted and thoroughly disillusioned in the end. So this blog is indeed a Toe in the Water, a place to document my thoughts in and on WdC but with a determination not to get sucked into the blog whirlpool ever again. Here's hoping.     |
| Other Bikes This is more like an addendum to the previous post and it’s more about motor bikes. So, if my Ducati post didn’t interest you, don’t bother with this one. While writing said post, I was going to say that the Ducati was the only motor bike I’ve ever ridden. But then I remembered that it wasn’t. There was a Honda 50 that my father bought for delivering stuff from his chemist shop. On occasion, I was dragooned into making deliveries on the thing. After the Ducati, it was a pretty disappointing machine. Speed was not its metier. Oh, it was fast enough for most things, but that was never going to be enough for a teenager who had ridden a racer. Worse, it was an automatic. No playing with gears then - just the jerky clunk to get moving and then it did the work for you. Buzzing along at thirty miles an hour - it was good at that. Mind you, I am prepared to bet that anyone having a Honda 50 as their first biking experience would be hooked. It’s that two-wheels thing that does it. Then there was the Lambretta scooter that someone gave me as transport when I got married. Poverty is a great teacher and I was grateful for that old, tired machine. Anything beats walking, after all. But it was a death trap. Clumsy, slow, and poorly balanced, that machine made me feel really vulnerable when I rode it. I was not sorry to see it go when I could afford to buy a clapped-out but charming and aged Morris Minor. And that, too, is a story for another time. Anyway, that explains why I couldn’t claim to have only the Ducati on my motor bike resumé. If you count the Honda and the Lambretta as bikes, that is. They are two-wheeled after all. Word count: 308 |
 Ducati 175 In my last post, I promised myself and anyone who read that episode that I’d write about the motor bike that featured therein. It was a 1960s Ducati 175. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? But there are certain facts you need to know. Especially that it was the racing version fitted up to be road legal. Which meant that it had a silencer (muffler). And, as a result, it was fast. More than that, you should understand about that little 175 cc motor. It was an odd size for racing and, because there was no category for that capacity, it had to race against the 250s. But it still won all the races. That little screamer of an engine humbled all that came against it at the time. And now I had the opportunity of riding the beast. The picture up there doesn’t really do it justice. I chose it because it has the right design of fuel tank. Sexy is the only way to describe those curves and bulges and swooping lines. The rest of the bike that I came to know wasn’t nearly as fancy as the one above. It was stripped down of all unnecessary weight and never as well presented. I doubt that my sister’s boyfriend ever cleaned it and it certainly had no parts painted gold! It was a thing for one purpose only and that was to go fast. Okay, it was tiny compared to the 1,000 cc monsters bikers ride today. But bear in mind that the only bike I’d ridden before used pedal power as its motivating force. I loved that bike. I took it on the old Salisbury circuit that was no longer used. Down the straights it was so quick the tears were streaming from my eyes. Goggles? Nah, who could afford real biking gear in those days? I doubt I got anywhere near the lap record but it was exciting and magical beyond description. On the way home, I leaned into a corner and the foot rest scraped the tarmac. That was when I learned about the murderous side of motor bikes. Fun they are and in incredible quantities. But they’re also killers if you make a mistake. The net result was that I elected never to get a motor bike. I bought cars when the time came (before that, actually, but that’s another story) and did all my crazy stuff in them. The glory and exhilaration of bikes I understand but I knew that I’d have killed myself on one sooner or later if I gave the things the chance. My oldest son has owned and ridden bikes for years now but he was always more level-headed than me. Even so, he managed to break a pelvis a while back. He rides the big ones and has taken lessons and so on - should be safe now, I think. So that was the mighty midget, the Ducati of my teenage years. I only got to ride it a few times but it stays in my memory as a bright star that illuminates a brief period in my life. My advice is never ride a motor bike. Why risk the danger of being bitten by the bug and getting one for yourself? They’re more fun than should be legal. And they’ll get you in the end. Especially if it’s a beautiful Italian job, light as a feather, and just screaming to go. Word count: 574 |
| A Tale of Long Ago Magic’s song, Rude, is a pleasant little ditty with a narrative. This is the first time I’ve heard it and I must confess that it made me think of my late elder sister. So here’s her story. When she was in her late teens (I was in my slightly earlier teens), she fell in with an older guy and became quite serious about him. As far as I was concerned, the only reasonable thing about him was that he had a motorbike. A very fast bike, being a racer fixed up to be road legal. And he let me ride it occasionally. Man, that was a fantastic bike and I scared myself at least a couple of times on it. The real point was that it put me on the guy’s side, of course. Maybe he wasn’t so stupid after all. But it did nothing for my father’s view on him. The bike was probably the start of it but their relationship worsened through various events until, eventually, the old man declared that my sister was to have nothing further to do with him. Bad move on my father’s part. It wasn’t long before the young lady declared that she was moving out of the house. Worse than that, she was moving to another town in another country. Having just turned eighteen, she could override my father’s objections and off she went. It wasn’t long before we heard that the relevant boyfriend had also moved to that town. A few years later they returned, my father realised that his tactics had been entirely wrong, and grudgingly he accepted the relationship. They married soon after. So the story tells us a little about humans and their foibles. Make something forbidden and they are bound to desire it even more. Unfortunately, it doesn’t end there. It turned out that the guy was a money-making machine - in a few years he was a millionaire and the couple had produced two large and bike-racing nephews for me. And then the happy couple got divorced. He cared more for making money than for my sister, apparently. She found another guy (much poorer but a thoroughly decent feller) and they lived happily in obscurity. And what I got out of it was that everything was caused by that wonderful bike (Ducati 175). Had its owner not had it, my father would never have objected to him, my sister would have soon forgotten him and moved on to others, and everyone would have had a less dramatic life. Except my nephews, of course. But you can’t have everything. Word count: 431 |
| A Thought for the Moment If I thought I was going mad, would you say I had taken the psycho path? |
| Reviews and All That I notice I’ve done more reviews than I’ve had community recognitions. Perhaps that means I am the Phantom Reviewer. Or maybe my reviews are hardly worth mentioning, let alone recognising. Yes, I know that CRs are for all sorts of things as well as reviews. But that makes my condition even worse. I shudder to think how few CRs were for my reviews. Although it’s nice that they hand out one for every month in which you reviewed something. Oh, you didn’t know that? Well, obviously, you’re not reviewing enough then! Word count: 91 |
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